Preaching/Converting people to a given religion

[Heaven's Thunder Hammer]

This is something that came up last night with my gaming group. The zenith in the group attempted to preach to the masses during a diplomatic conference that the PC's were hosting. He decided to use "Masterful Performance Technique" (or whatever the name is) to buy extra successes. Between the roll and buying the extra successes, he got 11 successes. So I look up a legendary feats of performance, and see that 5 successes will form a liberating army at your own execution out of the watching crowd. So I just say... "Yeah, you've made conversations out of everyone attending the conference, all of the serving staff, everyone!"


However, I don't want my PC to just walk into a town and convert everyone in sight, easy as pie. My thought is to allow him the converts, but his converts are untested... So that he will sift the strong from the weak when their faith is tested. Still though, I'm just curious how other people would run it. Any thoughts?

 

[Persell]

I have a similar problem with a pair of CoI solars I have as part of my larger circle as they run around preaching to the small folk about the glories of the shining ones, etc etc. Generally with impressive if not outstanding successes.  Of course, I can't have them walking into any city in the realm and causing a total revolt within the first 5 minutes just by impressing a new faith upon the common folks so I have thought out two issues when it comes to preaching faith/dogma/religion.


1.  Faith among the common folks is a fickle thing.  They will worship whatever or whomever keeps them fed and protected.  The plethora of gods that have emerged to exploit the mortal populace has turned religion into a faith based tax system.  Faith in the shining ones or the unconquered sun doesn't do a whole lot to turn aside generations of immaculate indoctrination or protect a rebellion from being trampled by a legion.  Faith is a matter of necessity and what's popular at the moment, people will eventually go back to what is most relevant for their every day lives.


2. Magic fades as do impassioned words in one's memory.  One speech isn't going to change deep seeded beliefs, no matter how relevant or well delivered.  Just like green troops can be trained into an elite force, belief and faith must be built from the ground up and can falter if left incomplete or untended for a long time.  In mechanical terms, I allocate successes based on how the PC approached the situation and funnel the rest of the successes off into extending the duration of the interaction.  If characters seriously want to build contacts/followers/believers/whatever, I use a similar system to how vinculum worked in the old Sabat, slowly raising in level based on successive persuasive rolls (the value is 1 the first roll, each successive time roll 1d10, if the roll is greater than the current value, the permanent value increases by 1).


Ultimately, either way an angry mob is easy to whip up but if a character wants to develope a gathering of truly "faithful" they need to invest a lot of time into it...  It's just like developing any resource.  Essentially it's the same as someone with insane craft charms... with the exception of a few charms, you can't just whip a project together in your mind, make a roll and suddenly have a a fully terraformed demense with a manse sitting atop it.

 

[Quorlox]

However' date=' I don't want my PC to just walk into a town and convert everyone in sight, easy as pie. My thought is to allow him the converts, but his converts are untested... So that he will sift the strong from the weak when their faith is tested. Still though, I'm just curious how other people would run it. Any thoughts?[/quote']
Using the guidelines in the book, the masses would be constantly swayed to worship whomever happens to be in town at the moment, which is not the kind of world that makes for good storytelling.  True conversion should require more than a flowery speech and should be more difficult to obtain.  In the beginning, this makes it more difficult to build a religion, but once formed, it's longer lasting.  The Exalt doesn't have to worry that all of his followers will be stolen if he leaves for a week.  


I prefer to think of social abilities as appealing to a character's emotions and since emotions are transitory, so are the effects.  In the case of conversion, I suggest allowing the target's a Conviction Check if their faith is truly tested.   But usually a speaker isn't trying for outright conversion, but is instead trying to pursuade the crowd of a single point such as war is bad or all men should shave their heads.  


I'm currently toying with the idea of linking social abilities more closely to Virtues.  The example you cited from the book that says 5 successes will sway a crowd at your execution, etc. is among my least favorite examples because it leaves out too many details.  The Virtues are supposed to protect against a variety of things, such as seduction,  but the books never outline how they are supposed to be used.  For example, if the Exalt was captured by an brutal spirit that torments its subjects, the Exalt's speech might provide the crowd with enough courage (i.e. an automatic success on a Valor Check) to finally revolt.  But if the Exalt was captured after torturing and killing helpless villagers in a kingdom with a popular ruler, the crowd is much less likely to be swayed to do anything to help.  In this case, the Exalt would have to overcome the crowd's Conviction to carry through with the execution.  The speaker would have to appeal to their Compassion that he doesn't really deserve to die for his heinous crimes.  If successful, the crowd might request that he's banished instead of executed, but they'd never become his liberating army.

 

[Flagg]

What Sato said.


-S

 

[Persell]

one possiblety is to have it work on the masses just fine but devout immaculates (which does NOT describe most of the realm) require more personal persuasion.


I will point out that you'd need something like 40 successes on your performance roll to convince Chejop Kejak that his ways are evil.


Wonder WHAT he'd do if you succeeded.


and believe me he would either appear himself or send out a 3rd circle demon to do it for him (If he doesnt have acess to a emeral thurible (appears in the Earth aspect book, I'd be shocked) once you did that in the realm proper.

 

[Obsidian Soul]

I would use the same rule concerning making friends for making converts.  The legendary success guidelines would be for making people who want to revolt but are too scared to come under your banners against an evil ruler.  Convincing people to give up their childhood religion is a lot harder than forming a mob.

 

[Persell]

theirs only 50 or so zenith castes and many thousands of mortals the exalts should have some chance, I think of getting mass conversion.


though I'd agree it should be somewhat hard.


maybe require the player to get the persons willpower squared in successes, giving him most of the petty extras while leaving the stronger willed untouched.

 

[StarHawk]

Did the player Roleplay the conversion well? Did the player bring up good points in his speech? And was it an extended roll?


IMO, if the player Roleplays it out well then most things are possible. On difficult things like convince an entire town to follow the "evil sun" which 1 person says is not so evil... that, I think, should require stunting, roleplaying, and a few awesome dice rolls.


In a Wyld-Hunt game I played a while ago our characters were faced with a simular choice. Either we could talk to the village-folk and turn them from their blasphemy, or we could kill them whole-sale. The compassionate few of us took up the task of pulling groups aside and talking to them. Or ST made us write down what "turning points" we were bringing up in our talk with them, and he'd take that and modify our difficulty. For example, a guy in the group (with a compassion of only 1) said : "Follow us, or the All Powerful Scarlet Empress will smite you and all you love for betraying her." ((This was set months after her "absence" we didn't know she was gone for good, and everyone off the island certainly didn't know))


Or another example : "Only the belief in the Immaculate faith can save you. By returning to the fold we can send missionaries to help with your farming, teaching you the time-and true methods of crop rotations, we can teach your young how to grow strong... teach you to make supirior weapons, give your town Holy Dragon Blooded to protect your streets, smite your enemies, ect"

 

[psychoph]

The way I would interpret that charm is that it is temporary as other poster have said.  I would consider adding to the charm influence lasts for a scene plus some time for successes.  If you want a mechancial way to deal witht he extra successes.  11 is a lot.


The other thing I would say is that it only works on  those watching, which to me means they have to be actively listening not just within earshot doing their daily work, or bartering with a vendor.  It isn't an easy thing to get 1000 people to stand up and pay attention, beleive there is another charm for that.  Also you have the issue of ear shot, another charm I beleive is provides you with a boost in range of your voice.  


IMO to convert something like the major auction in Nexus to the Unconquered sun you would have to combo all three charms together, as well as pray the Concil doesn't want to kill you after or before you even start.


Other problems occur as you make a name for yourself.  The wyld hunt will find out and the DB's and Sidereals have charms for resisting persausion and for killign lots of lowly humans.  You also have to think of the local dieties who won't take kindly on their flock being converted right out form underneath them, which means you might end up with opposibng charms being used, or a fight on your hands.


All in all though the characters should have some success with converting people in a town after gathering them together, and 11 success is a lot, 6 over legendary.

 

[Persell]

I'd agree.


at the very least anything over 5 successes should generaly get ordinary non exalted humans to not automaticaly attack or flee from the exalt on sight because of his status as "anathema"